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Unabashed polygamist Winston Blackmore is asking the B.C. Supreme Court to quash the single criminal charge against him on a legal technicality. Filed Friday, the petition comes less than a month before Blackmore is scheduled to be back in provincial court to choose whether he wants to be tried by a judge or jury on the one count on which 24 women’s names are listed as “wives.”

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The psychiatrist of a man who beheaded a fellow passenger aboard a Greyhound bus is recommending Vince Li be moved from a mental hospital to a community group home in Winnipeg. Dr. Steven Kremer told a criminal code board review hearing Li is at low risk to reoffend. Kremer says Li has not had any hallucinations in over a year and understands the need to take his medication. Li was found not criminally responsible for stabbing and beheading Tim McLean, a young carnival worker, in July 2008. Li said he heard voices telling him to kill McLean. He has been living at a mental health hospital in Selkirk, Man., but has been given more freedom, including unescorted visits in the community.

The Canada Border Services Agency has laid charges including fraud, forgery and counselling misrepresentation against seven people who were allegedly involved in an unlicensed immigration consulting business. The CBSA alleges that the owner and employees of New Can Consultants Ltd. and Wellong International Investments Ltd “advised and assisted clients in providing misleading and untruthful statements on permanent resident renewal cards and citizenship applications,” CBSA spokeswoman Stefanie Wudel said in a news release Tuesday.

There will be more support for vulnerable victims and witnesses at criminal trials under new provincial rules that respond to recommendations from the 2012 Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. One of the key recommendations from the hefty inquiry report, written by former attorney general Wally Oppal, was for B.C.’s criminal justice system to be less alienating, especially for women who work in the sex trade.

It’s called the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Practices Act and it’s almost certain that polygamists from Bountiful, B.C. will be among the first affected by it when or if it’s passed. The federal bill is being fast-tracked and, by the end of Wednesday, is expected to be approved by the Senate’s human rights committee and passed on to the Senate with a recommendation for its approval.

The emotive moment of Remembrance Day has abated, so let’s revisit the impostor who masqueraded as a decorated soldier and brought a nationwide firestorm of humiliation upon himself. So far as I can tell, unlike the impostors who fill my email inbox with impersonations of police officers, court clerks, tax officials and so on, all demanding my personal data with seeming immunity, this deception wasn’t intended to defraud anyone for financial gain.

The B.C. Supreme Court smeared its robes with political tar sand by issuing the injunction in the Burnaby Mountain pipeline dispute. In a bit of legal sleight-of-hand, Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen robbed protesters of their right to civil disobedience, fettered their defences and sullied the court.